Guests: Online Media

George Takei

GEORGE TAKEI

George Takei is best known for his portrayal of Mr. Sulu in the acclaimed television and film series Star Trek.

He’s an actor, social justice activist, social media mega-power, star of the upcoming Broadway musical Allegiance, host of the AARP-produced YouTube series Takei’s Take, and subject of To Be Takei, a documentary on his life and career.

Takei’s acting career has spanned five decades, with more than 40 feature films and hundreds of television guest-starring roles to his credit. Takei is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Actors’ Equity Association, and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

With the outbreak of World War II, Los Angeles, California-born Takei and his family were placed behind the barbed-wire enclosures of United States internment camps along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans. Takei spent most of his childhood at Camp Rohwer in the swamps of Arkansas and at wind-swept Camp Tule Lake in northern California. At the end of the war, Takei’s family returned to their native Los Angeles.

Inspired by this difficult chapter of American history, Takei developed the Broadway-bound musical Allegiance, an epic story of love, family and heroism in which he stars alongside Tony Award winner Lea Salonga. Allegiance’s record-breaking world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in 2012 won multiple awards and will be followed by a Broadway run in 2015.

Now a community activist, Takei serves as chair of the council of governors of East West Players, the nation’s foremost Asian Pacific American theater. He is also a member of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender political organization. Takei is Chairman Emeritus of the Japanese American National Museum’s Board of Trustees; a member of the US-Japan Bridging Foundation’s Board of Directors; and served on the Board of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission under President Clinton. In recognition of his contribution to the Japan-United States relationship, Takei was conferred with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by His Majesty the Emperor of Japan in 2004.

To Be Takei, a Jennifer M. Kroot documentary on the life and career of Takei, premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2014 and was released in select theaters across North America in August 2014.

Takei shared a Grammy nomination with Leonard Nimoy in 1987 in the Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording category. Takei also received a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame in 1986. And in 1991 he left his signature and hand print, in cement, in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. His autobiography, To the Stars, was published in 1994, and in 2012 and 2013 he published Oh Myyy! There Goes The Internet, and its sequel, Lions And Tigers And Bears: The Internet Strikes Back – both about his forays on social media and the internet, making the Amazon e-book and paperback best-seller lists in 2012 and 2013.

Mashable.com has named Takei the most-influential person on Facebook, where currently he has more than 8.3 million likes. He has 1.5 million followers on Twitter.

Takei and his husband, Brad Takei, were married at the Japanese American National Museum on Sept. 14, 2008.

Janet Varney

Janet Varney is a comedian, actor, writer and producer. In the animation world, she is lucky enough to be the voice of Korra on Nickelodeon's hit series The Legend of Korra. She also spent seven wonderful years hosting TBS's "Dinner and a Movie,” recurred on HBO's Entourage, was a series regular on the beloved E! and Yahoo series Burning Love seasons 1 and 3, and has made guest appearances in hit shows including How I Met Your Mother, Key and Peele, Psych, Bones, on the panel of Chelsea Lately, as a regular co-host on HuffPost Live, and has appeared in films such as Still Waiting, Drillbit Taylor and Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer. Janet is the host of the popular Nerdist podcast The JV Club and the co-founder, creative director and producer of SF Sketchfest, the San Francisco Comedy Festival, now in its 14th year.

Steve Napierski

Steve Napierski is a full-time web developer and part-time webcomic artist best known for the popular gaming site "Dueling Analogs". Steve first got into webcomics in 1999 with the ill-fated "Life With Fishnets." Beginning in 2004 he began laying out and coloring "Bored and Evil," which he did for two years. The next year he began "The Outer Circle" which he closely followed with the twice-weekly "Dueling Analogs." He co-founded the webcomic group Gamers Pair of Dice before launching his latest project, "Omake Theater" in 2009. Dueling Analogs can be found online at DuelingAnalogs.com and Omake Theater at OmakeTheater.com.

Sister Claire

Yamino is a self-published, freelance artist graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design, majoring in Sequential Art. In 2012 she earned a Master's degree in Creative Entrepreneurship from the Plymouth College of Art, England.
Other than writing and drawing comics, her hobbies include voice-acting, dancing in front of the mirror, travel, learning languages, speaking in the 3rd person, posing for pretentious photos, and going on adventures with her wife, Ash.

Ash is an avid writer and dart frog enthusiast, and when she's not working on stories, she's likely to either be up to her elbows in a terrarium or chasing after the nearest gecko. She's a huge fan of tropical plants, cartoons, and guava juice. She's fluent in ASL (American Sign Language), and her favorite pastime is having travel adventures with her wife, Elena Barbarich.

Garth Graham & Michael “Mookie” Terracciano (Starpower)

Michael Terracciano and Garth Graham spent years working on the fantasy webcomics "Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire" and "Finder's Keepers" respectively. Having finished their previous projects, they teamed up to start the sci-fi superhero space adventure, "STAR POWER!" It tells the story of the last of the Star Powered Sentinels as she protects and explores a galaxy that is far more dangerous, and more wondrous, than she ever imagined. Michael and Garth hope to make superheroes fun again, and to create a world you want to escape to, not from. Follow their interstellar quest at starpowercomic.com!

Savannah Houston-McIntyre & Andrew Hewitt

Savannah was born in the quaint year of 1987; and has been a writer ever since. She currently lives in the magical town of Stratford Ontario, and loves nothing more than to sit by the river and watch the swans go by as she plots in her notebooks. She has been publishing her work alongside her co-writer, Andrew Hewitt, for five years.

Savannah and Andrew are most known for their work on the popular webcomic titled Amya. Savannah acts as the lead writer and creator of the series, and Andrew is credited as a co-writer. Amya is a high-fantasy series following the adventures of Faye, mute spell-touched who has nightmarish visions of the end of the world. In her waking days she lives an idyllic life as the daughter of a great noble, but all that changes when a fateful encounter with a young man sends her on the adventure of a lifetime, and spiralling towards her role in the forthcoming apocalypse. Accompanied by her unlikely companions, she must decide if she wishes to sacrifice her humanity to save the world; or the world to save her humanity.

Jacob Grady (FAKKU)

Jacob is a web developer from Boston, Massachusetts. As a teenager he made websites for his favorite video games and anime, which sparked his interest in web design and development. In college he majored in Marketing and while there created FAKKU, now the largest English speaking hentai website in the world. His site attracts over 800 million pageviews a month and over 9 million unique visitors. He now works at BioWare as a Web Developer on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Sister Claire

Elena "Yamino" Barbarich
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose. Her prayers are answered when the beautiful blue businesswoman Gabrielle explodes from Claire's toilet and informs her she's pregnant with the new Messiah. As her simple black-and-white world gives way to a startling technicolor reality, Sister Claire realizes her "purpose" may put her in for more than she bargained for: a kaleidoscopic adventure to learn more about the Nuns' dubious crusade against the Witches and prevent history from repeating itself. Sister Claire is created by Elena Barbarich, also known commonly as Yamino. Yamino is a self-published, freelance artist graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design, majoring in Sequential Art. She was born in Rome, Italy, but has also lived in California, Austria and Belgium.
Other than writing and drawing comics, her hobbies include voice-acting, dancing in front of the mirror, travel, learning languages, creating custom clothing, speaking in the 3rd person, and posing for pretentious photos. Yamino has also done freelance work as a comic cover artist for both My Little Pony and Adventure Time comics.

Vitaly S Alexius

Vitaly S Alexius, is a renown digital painter/illustrator. He began getting recognition by doing various musicians CD covers. His art is easily recognizable and has been shared through various networks online. In early 2010 he began production of his webcomic, Romantically Apocalyptic, which has now become his main focus.

TeamFourStar

Scott Frerichs:

American playboy, industrialist, editor, and thousandaire playboy Scott “KaiserNeko” Frerichs took the internet anime parody landscape by storm in the late 2000s with the premiere of TeamFourStar. After being kidnapped by a group of foreign and domestic terrorists (Curtis Arnott and Nick Landis respectfully) he was forced to develop the project in a cave, with a box of scraps.

Over the years, however, he has advanced the production to greater heights than any of them imagined. Besides being a co-founder, co-writer, and editor, he provides the voices for King Kai, Trunks, Burter, Korin, Yajirobe, Garlic Jr., Zarbon, and various side characters in DBZ Abridged. He's also provided voices for indie videogame projects and the professional MOBA-game Heroes of Newerth.

Anthony Sardinha:
Anthony "Antfish" Sardinha is a Toronto based Voice Over Artist and Editor. Ant started doing internet voice acting in 2007 and have began going professionally since 2010, providing his voice for various animations (Totally Spies, TOME, hitrecord), video games (The Journey Down, Stick It to The Man, Heroes of Newerth), radio commercials, corporate promos and films.
Not only the creator of "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Abridged", Ant is also a member of the increasingly popular web series group, "TeamFourStar", providing his voice to many different characters in their series. Captain Ginyu, Dadoria, Sauza, Nikki, Bojack and various others in "Dragonball Z Abridged", The Dandyman in "Hellsing Abridged" and Keith Shardis in "Attack on Titan Abridged".
For more updates on Anthony's work, you can 'Like' him on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/AnthonySardinhaVO

Veronica Vera and Oliver Bareham (Bittersweet Candy Bowl)

Veronica "Taeshi" Vera has been drawing comics since she was a child. Inspired by cartoons and TV drama, the idea of a comic about angsty cats in love was probably inevitable! Together with her partner Oliver she has published comics online since 2006.

Following a group of cats and dogs through high school, Bittersweet Candy Bowl is filled with a mixture of comedy and romantic drama. Packed with casual flings, happy couples, and the occasional awkward date, it may just be the most comprehensive story about teenage cats and dogs ever told!

Marble Hornets

Marble Hornets (youtube.com/MarbleHornets) was created by Troy Wagner and Joseph DeLage during the particularly boring summer of 2009. Based on an idea spawned on the SomethingAwful.com forums, the series has overcome a near complete lack of budget through the use of a first person narrative that helps create an atmosphere that portrays a sense of fear from both the seen and unseen. This limited perspective and cryptic responses from the ever-present “totheark” has helped provoke discussion on many message boards across the internet and helped to boost what started as a pastime into a channel boasting over 360,000 total subscribers and over 70 million total upload views with minimal self-promotion. With this overwhelming show of support from its fans, the series now has its first two seasons available on DVD. The series was also an official honoree at the 15th annual Webby Awards in 2011.
Troy acts as co-creator, director, and editor of Marble Hornets, as well as playing Jay, the “narrator” of the series. He has also been working for multiple production companies on various commercial and narrative film projects in the Birmingham, AL area since 2005. In December of 2011, Troy graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor’s Degree in Media Production and a minor in Theatre.

Joseph, in stark contrast with Troy, had absolutely no experience in film in any shape, way, or form prior to his involvement in Marble Hornets. In addition to being a co-creator of the series, Joseph also plays Alex, whose tapes first captured images of The Operator. While he started out as a trumpet performance major at the University of Alabama, he has since switched to a media production major.

After meeting Troy Wagner through a mutual friend in late 2008 and bonding over a mutual love of offbeat humor and Monkey Island adventure games, Tim Sutton eventually became Troy’s “Hey, do you want to be in my videos?” guy. Having become a fan favorite, Timothy has been promoted from just a pretty face to a full-fledged writer for the series. He recently graduated from the University of Alabama as a film production major .

If you enjoy their work on Marble Hornets, perhaps you would enjoy something completely different. Between seasons and sometimes when they just feel like it, Troy, Joseph, and Tim will make a silly video and post it on their alternate channel, troyhasacamera on YouTube.

A Marble Hornets feature film is heading to the big screen in 2014.

Aaron Wood

Aaron is a graphic designer currently residing in the state of Massachusetts. When he’s not creating artwork that has a social media or pop culture angle to it, he’s probably trying to cook up a scheme to score some lobster.

Nerdfit Network

The year was 200X (where X = 7). Conventions all over the world were in a peaceful time where all panels were generic, the only music they played was on the radio, and there was little to no entertainment value brought to those looking for a little more excitement in their convention experience. Suddenly, the Nerdfit Network was born.

The Nerdfit Network joined forces to bring you entertainment with only one mantra in mind: Get Awesome. Between talented personalities, musicians, DJs, artists, writers and other great talents, Nerdfit has provided countless hours of programming to conventions through the majority of the country.

Find out more about them, their music and their shenanigans by joining them at their panels. Or, you know, you could also go to http://www.nerdfit.com. That also works.

T Campbell

An ex-stage actor and failed Internet shut-in, T Campbell has written eighteen gazintillion pages of comics, won some awards and gotten high-flying writers to praise his work, so if you don’t love this series, it’s probably your own damn fault. He spends his “spare time” designing crosswords, drafting health care bills and seeking the Anti-Life Equation.

Phil Kahn (Guilded Age)

A longtime professional neckbeard, Phil Kahn has spent a few years writing for various webcomic, webcomic criticism, and webcomic enthusiast sites, and is now trying to take his accumulated knowledge and put it all to use on Guilded Age. While building a daytime career as an IT guy and galaxy saver, he also spends a great deal of time practicing silly voices/faces in front of a mirror for the inevitable day where the only thing that can save the whole of humanity from certain doom is his impression of Henchman #24. He was also totally that gnome lock who just won’t DIE ALREADY. He is also utterly and undeniably obsessed with X-men's Cyclops.

Michael (Mookie) Terracciano

Michael "Mookie" Terracciano is the author and artist of the fantasy webcomic, "Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire" and the new "Star Power," a sci-fi collaboration with Garth Graham. Since its humble beginnings over ten years ago it has received acclaim for its addictive storylines, memorable characters, painful puns, awful alliteration and (gasp!) reliable update schedule. Want to know what's so interesting about a grumpy seer, a deformed sorceress, a talking cat, and their adventures with demon knights, bumbling thieves, planar-spanning threats and lower back problems? See for yourself at http://www.dominic-deegan.com!

Ross Nover

Rosscott is kinda famous on the Internet. Between podcasting, blogging, and writing bios about himself in the third person, he finds time to write the always amazing webcomic The System (http://www.systemcomic.com/), a daily comic-strip style mess starring iconography and graphics most notable from street and wayfinding signage. Having been written about in Fleen, Comic Book Resources, and onward through the blogosphere (which surprisingly does not set off my spell check), The System and its growing fans (known as Systemics) are sneaking up behind you and hoping that you join their ranks, for which you may receive a cookie*. While he often travels, he maintains his humble apartment in Washington, DC (which is in need of a fair amount of tidying).

*Cookie currently unavailable.

Jamie Noguchi

Jamie Noguchi is a DC area illustrator and cartoonist. He is the creator of the Asian American office romance comic, Yellow Peril (http://ypcomic.com), and co-founder of Super Art Fight. In his spare time, he journeys through parallel worlds recruiting fellow Kamen Riders to join in the fight against the evil empire, Dai Shocker.

Super Art Fight!

Hang onto your butts! The Greatest Live Art Competition in the Known Universe is stomping it's way back up north for another year of creative craziness and insanity, as only they can deliver. See for yourself the live event that's grown into a national favorite, breaking fire codes in rooms filled with excited audiences as their troupe of ridiculous artists battle for your love and affection! Cheer until your throat is sore, clap until your hands sting, and be ready for the time of your life. Equal parts live art, pro-wrestling and improv, there is truly no other event like it today. For more details, check out their website SuperArtFight.com.

Joeyblondewolf

Joey Pacheco has made a name for herself in the Cosplay Community. With over 98K followers on YouTube! Joey is known as a Cosplay-entertainer with her comical YouTube skits, as well as her motivational speeches to Inspire young artist like herself and also help the gay Community. If you see Joey in the hallways of anime conventions, feel free to say hi! Joey don't bite...much. Lol.

Look for Joeys panels and Awesome Channels!

Youtube: Joeyblondewolf2

Facebook: Joeyblondewolf2

Twitter: Joey_Pacheco

Elite3

Founded in 2010, Elite3 is the group behind "Pokémon 'Bridged," "Dark Swamp," and "Controller Rollers." They also produce various animations and contribute to other internet content. Mike "1Kids" Hecht is editor of Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, occasional voice monkey for TeamFourStar, and is Elescope in TOME. Jessi "Nowacking" Nowack is also known for voicing Seras in "Hellsing Ultimate Abridged" by TeamFourStar, Vinyl Scratch in "Epic Wub Time," Izumi in the English dub of "Queens Blade Rebellion," and a jillion other things she can't remember. Jerry "xJerry64x" Pakalinsky voices Jaden in "Yu-Gi-Oh GX Abridged" and can be heard in various projects by TeamFourStar and LittleKuriboh.